Happy New Year from the 'Old' me

New Year – Old Me?

The changing of the calendar to 2018 causes many inner observations, successes and failures of the past year. Good and ‘prefer not to admit to’ habits that need management in the future weeks and months. ‘Old me’ could refer to the continuous process of ageing that doubtless needs some consideration, or perhaps a previous version of me that now needs another outing. Which is it?

Colwick Parkrun 1st January 2018

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thanks to Andrew Philips for posting so many photos of the event.

It’s a couple of years now since I took the decision to start cycling to work. The habit is a good one and has become my usual method of commuting, eleven or so miles each way through rolling English countryside. I love it and now depend upon it for thinking time and exercise - I blogged about it previously when I got my new bicycle. However, my previous good habit of running has gradually given way to the bicycle commute. This was not intentional but rather a natural tapering of running days in the week as the cycling days increased. A few other factors coincided, so that by the last quarter of 2017 I was only regularly managing to go for a couple of runs at the weekend. So what? I shall tell you, I missed it, and have been back out pounding the pavement and river trails through the holidays. Not every journey out of the door has been euphoric, but running has a special place in my life. Running is growing again in popularity here in the UK. For the past two years I have promoted ‘Running Down Dementia’ for Alzheimer’s Research UK at our local Parkrun. So running feels good - intuitively it seems that it must be a good thing for our bodies to do. What is the recent scientific evidence for this?

There is a growing body of work looking at the effects of wheel running as an aerobic activity for mice and rats ^1–3. A lot of the findings support a protective role for wheel running in the context of age-related disease. The data on whether these forms of exercise are beneficial once disease is apparent are more equivocal. There is an added complication in that mice react as individuals to the running wheel even when they are from an inbred line (effectively genetically identical), some love to run, others just won’t – sound familiar? The mice that do run may run many kilometres in a single night, this has been likened to 'addiction' by my behaviour colleagues. So perhaps there are caveats to using data derived from wheel-running mice.

In our own species we need to consider whether neurodegeneration causes decreased activity and ensuing sarcopaenia (brain first) or whether declining muscle function with age causes neurodegeneration (muscle first), a question we are looking into with our current work ^4,5. Then we need to think also about whether it is practical to maintain a running schedule into old age, cycling might be doable for longer – perhaps this explains the MAMIL phenomenon ⁶. The studies carried out to date in humans must carry some inevitable flaws (self-reporting, poorly controlled groups in terms of ethnicity, socio-economic background etc.) but they still overwhelmingly support the benefits of aerobic exercise on age-related disease or mortality⁷. It is worth bearing in mind that running may not necessarily be the best or only form of exercise to provide benefits and that the ‘poison may be in the dose’ – how much is too much⁸?

In the meantime, it seems that it can’t be bad to continue to do something that feels good in the moment and has every possibility to help maintain healthspan for the years to come. So, here’s to more running again and the 'old' me in 2018!

1.              He, X. et al. Voluntary Exercise Promotes Glymphatic Clearance of Amyloid Beta and Reduces the Activation of Astrocytes and Microglia in Aged Mice. Front. Mol. Neurosci. 10, 144 (2017).

2.              Venezia, A. C., Quinlan, E. & Roth, S. M. A single bout of exercise increases hippocampal Bdnf : influence of chronic exercise and noradrenaline. Genes, Brain Behav. 16, 800–811 (2017).

3.              Miki Stein, A., Munive, V., Fernandez, A. M., Nuñez, A. & Torres Aleman, I. Acute exercise does not modify brain activity and memory performance in APP/PS1 mice. PLoS One 12, e0178247 (2017).

4.              Pollard, A. K., Ortori, C. A., Stöger, R., Barrett, D. A. & Chakrabarti, L. Mouse mitochondrial lipid composition is defined by age in brain and muscle. Aging (Albany. NY). 9, 986–998 (2017).

5.              Pollard, A., Shephard, F., Freed, J., Liddell, S. & Chakrabarti, L. Mitochondrial proteomic profiling reveals increased carbonic anhydrase II in aging and neurodegeneration. (2016). doi:10.18632/aging.101064

6.              Lepers, R., Stapley, P. J. & Cattagni, T. Age-Related Changes in Endurance Performance Vary Between Modes of Locomotion in Men: An Analysis of Master World Records. Int. J. Sports Physiol. Perform. 1–12 (2017). doi:10.1123/ijspp.2017-0222

7.              Lavie, C. J. et al. Effects of Running on Chronic Diseases and Cardiovascular and All-Cause Mortality. Mayo Clin. Proc. 90, 1541–1552 (2015).

8.              Oja, P. et al. Associations of specific types of sports and exercise with all-cause and cardiovascular-disease mortality: a cohort study of 80 306 British adults. Br. J. Sports Med. 51, 812–817 (2017).